Star Trek: Deadlock
by ModestyBlaise
Summary: Starfleet starship USS Butler and its crew, including Kirk's former flame Gaila, has been hijacked by newly awakened rogue augment, Nora. The Enterprise rushes to the rescue, but in order to match Nora's superior battle tactics, they must wake Kahn.
1. The Deep Freeze

Nora was cold. It wasn't a sensation as much as a knowledge. Her mind moved slowly, unable to connect. Synapses barely firing. The first sensation she had was of her lungs burning and pushing desperately to open. She gasped and her chest lifted suddenly. The breath held for a moment, as if her body, having remembered how to breathe in, was still trying to figure out how to breathe out. Her breath let out slowly.

Now she felt the cold. Deep cold. Immovable cold. But she also felt her body unfreezing, her heart pumping, her blood moving. She opened her eyes and for the first time in 300 years saw the inside of the cryogenic chamber. It had also been the last thing she'd seen, when she had put Khan into his chamber, checked on the status of the other 71, and finally also laid down for a long sleep, with her chamber set to open in 300 years. Three hundred years of travel through space, as fast as any ship could go. Three hundred years away from earth, from the purges, from the trumped up charges of war crimes, of being the scapegoat for the wars the humans had created. Her breathing steadied and she closed her eyes again, letting the system circulate her blood and warm her slowly. She felt tired, an exhaustion that came with being so very cold. She drifted to sleep, a real sleep, the first in 300 years, and drempt of what she would awaken to when she finally left the chamber. Where would the Botany Bay have taken them? What planets would be near? How wonderful it would be to start anew with all that was left of her people, the augments the humans had created and then tried to destroy. Nora closed her eyes and dared to dream.

She woke up again with no sense of time of how long she had slept, hours, days, another 300 years? She felt hungry. She felt good. There was still the lingering feel of cold, as if she'd stepped out into a chilly spring night, but it was a sensation and that felt good. She wiggled her fingers. She moved her head, she blinked, her eyes focused, but all she could see was darkness. It was the first sign something had gone wrong. The Botany Bay should have kept a small light on at all times in case one of the chambers accidentally opened. Or for when hers opened at the proscribed time. There were also the wrong sounds. It was too quiet for a ship going as fast as they were going. She wasn't on the Botany Bay. In that case, where was she? And were the others with her?

She took a deep breath. There was no way of knowing until she stepped out of the tube. But if they were captured there might be guards. To open the tube might bring trouble. But she couldn't stay in there anymore. The systems that supported her in stasis could do nothing to sustain her now she was breathing.

She pushed her lips together and took another cleansing breath, putting off the possible attack for another minute. Tensing and letting her muscles go to ensure they would work. Another breath. It might be fine. Perhaps the light had malfunctioned. Maybe they had crash landed on a planet. It might be okay. The plan might have worked.

She lifted her hands slowly to her shoulders and placed them flat on the top of the chamber. It felt cool against her warmed hands. She held them there for a moment before she gave the top a shove and lifted her head to look around. She didn't sit up immediately in case someone started shooting on sight.

But there was no shooting. Instead it was quiet and dark. She sat up and looked around. Dim emergency lights were on in a large hold, enough to see by. Wherever she was, they weren't expecting many people. Around her, in neat rows, were the other cryo chambers. She did a quick count. Seventy-three including hers. They were all here.

She glanced around, getting a sense of the room. Large. Cameras on the ceiling. Metal. A hold. In space or on a planet? It was clear that they had been picked up by someone, somewhere, and Nora wasn't about to make any assumptions about friend or foe.

She climbed out of the cryo chamber and stood up. Her muscles pulled and stretched with the movement and it felt good. She moved to the next tube over and looked into the frost encrusted glass. Varvara. A Russian augment who had been one of the last to make it to the refuge. She went to another, Anders. A good friend and former lover, he'd been a member of cabinet during Khan's leadership. She looked at others, Ynez, beautiful in sleep, Niall, his dark skin ashy in the ice. She ran her fingers along the buttons, the control panel that would start the unfreezing process, but she didn't push them. She didn't know where she was or who had her. Clearly they had no intent on killing them or they would have done so. One of them awakening would not seem too much of a threat. Awakening more might set off fear in those who held them and fear led to hatred and hatred led to death. Learn first and then awaken them when she knew they would be safe. But she couldn't help sliding the tips of her fingers along each keypad, feeling the edges of the screen and the soft grittiness of years of dust that clung there.

There was a clunk of metal and a snap of a heavy bolt. Nora turned to face the door. There were cameras and that meant someone was watching. So the opening of the door was no surprise. It was time to face the ones who held them.

A breeze floated in with the opening of the door and the air smelled sweet with springtime. Nora looked at the silhouettes of the two people in the door, backlit by the outdoors so she could not see details. But they were people, standing exactly as humanoids to, feet flat to the ground in boots, legs straight down from hips, curve in the upper length of the backbone leading to the head. Humans? Or perhaps others? She would need to get closer to find out. But there was one thing for certain. In the hand of each person was a gun. She didn't recognize the type by the silhouette, but there was no mistaking an automatic phaser held in shooting position. Some things seemed to never change. Precaution? Or true violence? Either way, not a good sign.

She stepped towards them.

"Don't move," barked a heavy male voice. "Stay right where you are."

She held up her hands in concession. "I've only been awake for 5 minutes and you are already here with guns." Her voice sounded hoarse and rusty from disuse. She stepped forward again, keeping her hands up.

"I mean it. Don't move or I will shoot you," declared the man.

She stood still, hands up. The men shuffled forward, guns up and pointed at her. They circled, one coming from each side of her. Humans. Once again she was at the mercy of humans.

She assessed them. Both men were right handed. Both young, but clearly trained and probably had some battle experience. She couldn't underestimate them when she still wasn't sure what shape her body was in. Maybe she could divert.

"Why are you arresting me?" she asked.

"Get on your knees," said one, the only who had talked.

Diverting didn't seem to be working. Time to know how far they would go if pushed. "And if I don't?"

"I'll use this baby on you. My sister was killed in when that ship crashed. Her and hundreds of others. Don't think I don't want to take that out on one of you."

She barely nodded, as if more a signal to herself than to either man. She slowly lowered herself down onto her knees. The talking man nodded at the silent man and the silent man lowered his gun and pulled out thick shackles.

"Careful," said the talking man. "They said the last one was like a super man. Took 7 shots to stun him."

Last one. Someone had awoken before. Who? And what happened? All the cryo tubes were there, so they put him back to sleep? Or was one tube empty? Her chest caught at the idea of an empty tube, another dead friend—no, another dead member of her family. The only family she had left after the purges.

"Where am I?" she asked. They didn't answer.

"Is this a ship? Are we on a planet?" Again, neither man answered. The talking man just kept his gun trained on her chest and the silent man moved slowly towards her, as if approaching a crouching panther.

"Who is in charge? Who do you report to?"

The silent one was near her now. He slung his gun around his shoulder and reached for her hand to shackle behind her. He grasped her wrist with his paper dry hand. The skin of her wrist tingled at his touch, remembering what contact with another being was. She had thought the day she woke up there would be hugging. Celebrating. The touch of friends, the caress of a lover. Instead her first touch was the chapped hand of a soldier ready to capture her again. She closed her eyes and whispered an apology to this man for what she was about to do to him. What she had to do to him.

She clenched his wrist in return and whipped his arm forward and across, pulling him headlong into the ground in front of her. His partner fired the weapon and the shot hit the man's falling body and the silent man's armor sizzled. The phasers were not set to stun, but to kill. If that was how they were going to play it, she could do the same. She rolled forwards, his next shot hitting the cement behind her.

She launched herself at his knees, knocking him backwards. As he fell she pulled his gun arm with one hand while she simultaneously struck his chest with the other. There was the crack of his ribs and the sick pop of his shoulder coming out of joint. The gun dropped from his now useless hand. He cried out and dropped sideways, hitting into a cryo tube and sliding down it. She stood up and in one sharp movement struck the man at the base of his skull. But not hard—or at least not as hard as she'd meant to. She'd pulled the punch, and what would have snapped the man's neck instead just sent him into unconsciousness.

It was a stupid move. He hadn't had any difficulty shooting at her, even killing his friend. She couldn't afford to play nice in a fight to survive. Too late now to rethink it. There were cameras. There would be more of them. They would have more guns and many more expendable bodies. She had no expendable bodies. There was her and 72 precious sleeping people and she wanted every one of them to wake up again.

She leaned over the unconscious man and ripped his communicator off his shoulder. She grabbed his gun off the floor and ran for the door. She'd need to make it past the waves of soldiers first. Then find out where she was and, if she could, what had happened before that the talking man had mentioned. From there she could figure out a plan to get them all out and away.

Again. Get them all out and away again.

If she'd had time she would have screamed, beat walls, cursed the heavens, and whatever dramatic gestures of grief and rage and frustration that came to her. Instead she flipped the gun and pushed the power lock over to stun. It was stupid. Stunned people get up again. They fight again, usually with more fervor and anger than the first time. Her hand stayed on the power lock for a fraction longer than necessary, but she didn't slide it back to kill. Stun it was.


	2. Impasse

"Then we are at an impasse," Kirk said.

"Then we are at an impasse," Uhura translated.

The Tarlac representative cocked her head as Uhura spoke. Uhura didn't like the situation either. Kirk was making ultimatums and promises that the Tarlac had every reason to doubt.

The representative, Mikan, nodded her head. "It is not an impasse if we understand each other. We do not wish to anger the Federation, but neither do we wish to anger the Klingons or the Son'a. They are too close to our world and the Federation would take a day at warp speed to come to our aid. Nor can you guarantee that you would not be outbattled and outmatched by the Klingons. You say you can guarantee the safety of our world, but you can't. We must remain neutral. It is better to be a servant and survive than to fight and die."

Uhura smiled, trying to convey her understanding, not just of the words, but of the situation, to Ambassador Mikan. She hoped Mikan understood. She turned and translated for Kirk.

Kirk didn't understand the Tarlac situation. "Tell her, if you are not with us, you are against us. We need this base built here."

Uhura translated.

Uhura spoke the moment they had beamed back aboard the Enterprise. "Captain, you showed no mercy for their situation. You've backed them into a wall."

"Klingon Federation hostilities are too high for them to not take a side. They can't be neutral."

She turned to Spock, "Why don't you say something?"

"The Tarlac thought is to play it safe. But they are wrong in the assumption that remaining neutral would give them a better chance of surviving. By allowing all sides free passage they are opening themselves to the risk of becoming a battlefield incurring just the sort of destruction and damage they seek to avoid. Therefore I concur with the Captain that they would be better served in accepting the help of the Federation."

Hopeless. Uhura turned and headed to her quarters.

She slapped the button and the door opened. She could have moved in with Spock long ago, but she kept her own quarters just for these moments, when his logic frustrated her and she needed her own space. Uhura took a few cleansing breaths that did nothing to calm her anger. Cleansing breaths was not going to do it. She needed to vent. She went to her screen and pressed buttons.

"Hi!" chirped Gaila, her green face flickering on the screen.

"Hi," Uhura said, and her frustration already starting to melt at the sight of her friend. "Where are you?"

"On earth, docked at Starfleet. We'll be leaving in a few hours. Where are you?"

"Orbiting Tarlac, near Klingon space, negotiating." With that Uhura began to rant, describing Ambassador Mikan, the Tarlac situation, the difficulties, Kirk and Spock. "The trouble with them is they have never been in a society that was anything but dominant. Kirk is American. Spock is Vulcan. They've always been from dominant culture." Not that their strength had helped them against Nero, but still, Spock had grown up in the dominant culture on a dominant planet. Uhura was from Uganda. She understood what it was to grow up balancing your own culture with that of others. Gaila was from Orion, an escaped slave girl who came to earth. She never spoke of this, even to Uhura. But she talked in her sleep, so Uhura knew some of it. Knew Gaila still had nightmares. Knew she probably always would.

"The only thing they know is win or lose, not compromise and not neutral." Gaila agreed.

Uhura nodded in agreement, glad to talk to someone who understood her. "Thank you for letting me vent."

"That's what friends—" Gaila stopped and turned as the lights in her room began to flash and emergency sirens went off.

"What's going on?" Uhura asked.

"I don't know. Testing emergency systems? I mean, we're still on earth." Emergencies usually meant taking fire or other serious damage to the ship that required immediate attention or evacuation. It was for space, when there was no escape from the safety of the ship except the escape pods. On earth who would attack them? If something was wrong with the ship it was unlikely to require full evacuation and even if it did they could simply walk outside.

A voice came through the ship. All bridge personnel to report immediately for emergency procedures.

"That's me," Gaila said.

"Call me back as soon as you can."

"Will do. But don't worry. It's probably nothing." Gaila blew a kiss and the screen went dark.

Nothing to worry about. Gaila is on earth. There was nothing to worry about.

Uhura kept repeating this to herself. Spock would tell her the same thing. The probability of there being a serious emergency while still docked on earth was remote. He'd have some percentage he'd calculated. Uhura occasionally wondered if he just pulled those numbers out of thin air.

But something deep inside her wouldn't let the worry go. Wouldn't stop telling her that, however remote, there was something real going on. Something dangerous. Gaila was the toughest person Uhura had ever known. She'd escaped being a slave girl. She'd escaped Nero blowing up every Starfleet ship around Vulcan, one of the few who survived from her ship. It was probably nothing. A glitch in the system.

"Just call me, Gaila," Uhura whispered. "Call me." She waited at the screen, expecting it to light up at any second and Gaila to say it was some sort of mix up. Something silly. She would spin the story, telling it in her bright voice, making it into a drama, a joke, a legend that they would laugh about over a drink for years later.

Uhura sat by the screen, waiting, but the screen stayed dark.


	3. Gaila

Nora raced down the hallway. She needed a moment to think, to process and come up with a plan to get her people away from the humans. To get them somewhere safe where they could start over without being hunted and killed for being Augments. For being the creatures that the human Dr. Frankensteins had created and then hated.

Time wasn't a luxury she had. Behind her lay the groaning bodies of men and women sent to kill her. There would be more sent soon. Her left side stung from a shot she'd barely dodged. It had grazed her, burning away the cloth and layers of skin. That would blister soon.

Away. First she just needed to get away. She could come back for her people. Assuming the humans didn't kill them or use them as collateral. She could deal with that later, when she had time to plan. Right now, she just had to get away.

But how? She didn't know where she was or what she would need. So far all she had seen were the hallways she was running down and people with phasers coming for her. Oh for a fucking EXIT sign.

The communicator chirped and one on the guards she'd downed gave the location he'd seen her. "Sector B, 2nd floor," he told them. At least now she knew there wouldn't be an exit here. What that didn't tell her was if she was above ground or below ground. She'd have to guess.

She rounded a corner faced more people coming in her direction from down the hall. More guards, or whoever they were sending after her, since some of them seemed better trained than others. There were five of them, with massive guns out, and a straight hallway to shoot down. She had no place to hide. Nowhere she could take cover and nowhere to really run that they could not follow her. She'd have to stand and fight.

One of them gave a shout when she saw Nora round the corner and at once blasted her phaser. Nora dropped and her momentum carried her skidding on the floor towards them. She rolled sideways, avoiding another volley of blasts and fired wildly at them with her own gun. It wouldn't hit unless she was lucky, but it would make them duck and stop shooting for a second. It was just long enough.

She jumped up and shot her own volley, striking two, dropping them unconscious to the ground. Three left. They recovered from their surprise and started shooting again. She slammed herself against the opposite wall, the blasts that ricocheted off the cinderblock walls she had just been near, burning off industrial cream paint and leaving scorch marks splayed out in all directions like a dark star.

They followed her movements with their shots, turning to follow her change in motion. She ran forward with the blasts hitting just behind her. She didn't have time to aim and fire her own gun. Instead she threw it, sending it spinning and whipping at their heads and taking advantage of their momentary distraction to run headlong into them. One kick and the first man dropped. But it was all she had time for before the other two had her point blank.

She grabbed the gun of the one closest to her and turned the woman towards her partner, holding her own gun to her neck. The man stopped, not willing to shoot at the female guard Nora had taken hostage. Without hesitating Nora flipped the gun forward and shot the man.

His body flew back into the wall at the blast and he landed, slumped and smoldering. Of course. She'd forgotten that the woman's gun would have been set to kill, not stun. Nora had killed him. She stared at the body for a second too long and the woman hit her hard in the chest.

Normally that hit wouldn't have hurt her much, the tiny blow of a lesser creature, but she'd hit the raw skin of Nora's left side and the sting was a surprise. Nora cried out and let go. The woman moved fast, grabbing a gun off the floor and turning to face Nora.

Stalemate. Each with a gun pointed at the other. Point blank.

The woman had green skin and red hair. She was tall, taller than Nora herself, and muscular. This was a woman who had trained. That would make her hard to fight off without damaging her. They stood still, facing each other, alert and waiting for the other to strike first.

Nora didn't want to hurt this woman. It was more than that she had decided to cause no casualties— though she had just failed that. It was that she admired the woman. This trained, quick woman with green skin.

"Nora," she said. "I'm Nora."

The woman moved her head, an acknowledgment without letting down her guard.

"You aren't human either," Nora said.

"No. I'm not," said the woman. Her voice was higher than Nora expected. She'd expected the grunt of a soldier. Instead her voice bubbled, even under the hard words.

"I just want to save my people. I want to get away from those who would use us and kill us for being who we are. Who they made us to be."

The woman didn't move, her face stayed the same, but she turned her head slightly, looking at Nora from the corner of her eyes. She was listening.

"I just want to escape," Nora said.

One of the men she'd first stunned started to stir, groaning and the green woman jumped, startled at the movement and sound. She glanced back at Nora.

"I didn't kill unless I had to," Nora said. "Please. Help me. I just want to escape."

The woman nodded once. She lifted her gun, clicked it to stun with a fast, sure movement, and shot the man. "Gaila. Come with me."

Something in Nora's chest felt like it caved with relief. Her face ached with sudden tears that she didn't have time to shed. She wasn't alone. This woman wouldn't betray her. Nora didn't know why she thought that, but she trusted this green woman. Gaila. Somehow Gaila knew what it meant to need to run, to escape to safety.

Gaila led her down the hallway and through a set of heavy metal doors. She walked fast taking long strides, as fast and confident as Nora's own pace. As she walked she clicked her communicator and spoke. "Gaila. Rest of team down. Target is headed toward section B."

"Copy that," the communicator said back to her.

Another set of doors and Nora saw a sign that read Section D. They went down a flight of stairs.

"Where are you planning on going?" Gaila asked.

"I woke up from a three hundred year sleep fifteen minutes ago to being shot at and I don't know where I am. My plans are hazy."

Gaila let out a sharp breath of laughter and smiled.

"Well, we're well and truly fucked here. How do you feel about off planet?"

"Anywhere I can regroup and figure out how to rescue my people."

"Let's go." Gaila picked up her pace.

"Why are you helping me?" Nora asked. She had to. It was more than curiosity. It was a need to know something of this other woman.

"I know how it feels to need to escape captivity."

And with that Gaila opened another set of doors and they were in the bright sunlight of the outdoors.


	4. No Escape

Nora blindly followed Gaila into the sunshine. She had no choice. There wasn't time to stop and her 300 year sleepy eyes were slow to adjust to the sudden bright light. They stung and tried to close, but Nora couldn't afford to be entirely blind. She squinted and hoped Gaila was trained enough to stay alert and look up for shooters as well as ahead and to the sides.

The ache in her eyes began to subside, allowing Nora to see again. They were at a military base of some kind. Ships to the left and right. Or at least Nora assumed ships. They were different than in her time, oddly shaped and unwieldy. She could see how they would be fine in space, but how did that birdlike, unbalanced thing escape gravity? How did it even get off the ground?

There was the sound of phaser fire and Nora instinctively dropped to the ground and looked for the attacker. She'd gotten distracted by ships and physics problems. Stupid. On the ground, shooter in sight, Nora clicked her gun to stun and fired. The man went limp. She wouldn't get caught out like that again. This time Nora kept her mind in the moment.

When the firing had started Gaila had raced behind one of the ships. A smaller one named USS Levine. Nora raced for her, dodging more fire as she went. There were shouts and blasts and a siren began to blare. Any jump they had on the humans was gone now.

Nora reached the ship at a dead run, slamming herself into the hull to stop her momentum. Gaila was panting. "Here. Small ship, but fast. Doesn't take a crew. You can escape in here." Gaila hit something on the hull and a previously invisible door opened up.

"Thank you." Nora reached out her hand and touched Gaila's arm. She stepped into the door and then turned. "You can't stay here. You helped me."

Gaila looked determined. "I know what I face. Go."

Nora hesitated. She didn't want to leave without this woman, not only for fear of the consequences to Gaila for helping her, but also because she could be useful, either as a hostage or as a guide for a time she didn't know or understand yet. She would need the help. But as she looked at the green skinned woman Nora couldn't do it. She couldn't force Gaila to come with her. She couldn't take the hostage. Gaila had said she knew what it was to need to escape and Nora believed her. She couldn't take Gaila against her will. She wouldn't. She would just have to figure the rest out on her own. Nora stepped into the ship and the door closed behind her.

She was in a small cargo bay. It was oddly silent in here. Outside there had been the voices, the phasers, the siren. Now the siren was just a faint noise in the background, dampened by the insulation needed for living creatures to survive the radiation of space. Lights flipped on at her presence, clearly set to turn on with movement. Nora paused a moment before she spotted the way into the ship. She ran, lights turning on just ahead of her the whole way. A small ship, it was fairly intuitive to find the cockpit. Or would it be a helm on a ship like this?

Once there she stopped again. For the first time she wondered how Gaila was doing and if the guards would have an easy time getting into the ship. Gaila had seemed to just touch the hull to open the door. If there was no better method than that to lock it, at least as far as Nora could do right now, she was in for trouble. The faster

The sooner she got up and out the better.

She sat down in the single seat of the ship and looked at the controls. There was a blank, black screen in front of her. Buttons. A lever. And no indication of what to do or press.

Shit, she couldn't fly this thing. She should have forced Gaila to come with her rather than let her emotions take charge and let her go. Nora was making a lot of stupid mistakes today. Mistakes she wouldn't have made 300 years ago. But there was no use in self-recrimination now. Those emotions never helped anyone. The only thing she could do now was change course and fix it.

Nora set her gun to kill and fired it into the control board of the ship. The door she'd come in was probably guarded now. She'd have to find another way out. She'd need another plan. She was still stuck here and in danger, but Gaila's help had given her one thing. A little time to think. A moment to consider. And with that moment, Nora suddenly stood a better chance. She was outnumbered, out gunned, and had very little idea of how this new time worked. But what she had was her augmented brain and skills. That hadn't always been enough to use against the humans, but it usually had been. She hoped it would be this time.

Nora left the helm and searched for another way out.


	5. Messages and Worries

After ten minutes Uhura decided she needed to stop waiting and get up from her screen. She'd actually decided that five minutes before but hadn't been able to make herself do it yet, saying that Gaila would probably call back in another minute or two. It would be fine. It was simply a training drill. An emergency drill. She was on base. On earth. And while there had been some recent protest and unrest after Kahn had destroyed half of San Fransisco, Gaila wasn't at the Academy. She was… All Gaila had said was that she was docked at Starfleet. But there were Starfleet bases all over the world. Which one? They were well protected. Even if someone attacked a base it would be difficult for them to do much damage. So where was the USS Butler taking off from?

Uhura opened her screen again and went to the Enterprise cloud drive. This far into space it was difficult to get all the information uploaded. The fastest connections went to communications where the time lag could cause dangerous problems. Even so, this far out into space there was a pause of about five seconds between when a communication was sent to Earth and when it came back. She barely noticed it by now. But information such as this could take days to reach the ship. It was a question of finite resources. Still, even out-of-date records would be better than none. Uhura typed USS Butler, flight schedule, location, crew.

USS Butler

Current: Sahara Base

Scheduled launch: 2260.064

Uhura stopped reading at the words Sahara Base. Sahara Base. A small, secluded base. From the outside and most Starfleet records it was just a backwater. At most they launched three ships a year from there, mostly just as a show to make it look like a normal base. In truth it was a highly protected security area. It was the base with the backups of all the computer data and launching systems for Starfleet. Every bit of information got backed up there, and if any systems went haywire on another base, the Sahara Base could remotely override it. It was a backup, though it had never been used.

It was also the base where they put Khan and his crew into cold storage.

Uhura felt her stomach drop. Khan. If something was going on at the Sahara Base, it had to be Khan. It was too far away and seemingly insignificant to the outside for the protests to have reached. And too highly guarded and secured for any upset coming from the outside to cause much damage. They had constant satellite surveillance there. It had to be Khan.

Uhura put her hands over her mouth. Kahn was deadly. Highly secured or not, she had no doubt in his abilities. Last year his opening salvo had been to blow up a building and then attack Starfleet, killing several of the top Starfleet leadership, including Admiral Pike. Kahn would be able to single-handedly take down a base. Even the Sahara base.

—Oh Gaila, Uhura thought. —Don't do anything stupid. Don't face him. Just run. Please, just run.

But Gaila couldn't hear her advice. She was on Earth, with Khan.

Uhura took her hands away from her mouth and blinked rapidly, forcing away the memory of Khan beating Spock as they flew over San Fransisco. Forcing away the memory of Kirk, limp and dead against the glass at the heart of the ship. Forcing away any thought except that something had to be done, and it had to be done now.

Uhura pressed the communicator that would hail the bridge. "Captain. I need to talk with you. Right now."

"Khan escaped," Uhura said the moment she stepped on the bridge. Kirk had been turning his chair towards her, but now he stopped still, his whole body tensed in his captain's chair. The rest of the bridge similarly stopped, as if each had suddenly been turned to stone. And then the heads turned to look at her.

"What? How?"

"I don't know." She went down the steps and stood near the chair.

"Why have you heard of this and we haven't heard it on the bridge?"

"Nothing is out yet. I was talking to Gaila." Uhura told him of talking to Gaila and the sudden emergency.

"But do we know it is Khan?" Spock said. "All the information you've given us could be from something as simple as an emergency drill."

Uhura shook her head. "She would have called back by now. She hasn't. And who else but Khan could cause an emergency at Sahara?"

"She's right. It's too well protected."

Spock cocked his head and then straightened it. "Captain, the probability that Khan could spontaneously awaken from cryogenic sleep is point 3 to the negative one hundred."

"It's happened." Uhura lifted her head, her chin thrust out. He was not going to make her disbelieve herself with his logic. Not this time.

"Uhura, I know that Gaila is your friend, but you seem to be overreacting to what is probably a routine emergency drill."

"Okay, everyone just hold up," Kirk said. "How long has it been since you heard from Gaila?"

"About half an hour, sir."

"So if it were a drill, she would have gotten back by now."

"Absolutely, sir."

"Still, we have no information that this is a serious emergency or that it has anything to do with Khan," Spock said.

"He's right, Captain," Sulu said. "I was there once and had to hunker down for twelve hours during a sandstorm."

"Sulu," Kirk said. "When were you at Sahara Base?"

"It was only brief, sir. I piloted a courier with hardware and was stuck for during the storm."

"Huh. You never cease to surprise me."

"Captain," Uhura said.

"Right. Khan."

"We can't abandon our post, Captain," Spock said. "We have an obligation to continue our negotiations with the Tarlac."

"I never said we were abandoning our mission." Kirk turned his chair to the front again. "Hail earth," he told the man on communications, his name was Jeremy and he had the communications board when Uhura was not there. "We'll just ask if Khan woke up and is attacking Sahara."

Said in Kirk's cheerful, careless tone it sounded like a stupid worry. An impossible event. To even ask was to make a fool of herself. For the first time since she had left her screen, Uhura felt doubt; the possibility that this might just be a silly fear. But she wasn't prone to silly fears. Something was very wrong. She just knew it.

"Earth is hailing us, sir."

"Put them on, Lieutenant."

There was no picture, only a voice in the middle of a message, "All Starfleet ships are to return to earth. I repeat, all Starfleet ships to return to earth. There has been a hostile attack."

The message continued, but Uhura didn't hear it. She looked at Spock, but he was unperturbed as usual and unaware that it might be good to comfort his girlfriend who was worried about her best friend. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to quell the anger at him. It was misplaced anger. He hadn't done anything—but then that was the problem, he hadn't done anything. But anger was good. It was better than worry.

Uhura stepped over to the communications console. "You're relieved," she told Junior Lieutenant Jeremy Gardner. He moved back at her order. Spock started to say something. Uhura was supposed to be resting. She'd put in time on the bridge and translating and was well overdue for a rest. She stopped him with a look.

It was a one day trip from the outer edges of Federation space back to earth in warp drive. She wouldn't be able to stay working for all that time but right now if there were any messages coming in, she wanted to be right there to receive them.


End file.
